Confessing
by kittodaijoubu
Summary: Oshitari groans and buries his head in his hands. They should really have a how-to manual for this." Oshitari needs to tell Gakuto how he feels.


A/N: Happy Vday, everyone! This wasn't quite the way I envisioned the story, but at least there's another plotline for me to work with for the next one, right...

Oshitari Yuushi is widely acknowledged to be a tensai nearly equal to Fuji Syuusuke of Seigaku.

This implies that he should not at all be incapable of coming up with a perfectly good plan to celebrate Valentine's Day with Mukahi Gakuto. He has a good deal of background research, for one thing, and an entire arsenal of resources at his disposal.

The only problem with all his preparation is: (a) aforementioned has no idea of his feelings; (b) all background research applies exclusively to females, because very few people have caught on to the idea of writing romance novels about boys that don't involve poncey outfits, fighting, dodgy descriptions of a carnal ilk, more fighting, etc etc etc.

None of which apply to Gakuto, really. (except the fighting, but that's only when Gakuto meets Kikumaru Eiji in the street without either of their doubles partners around to halt the fireworks. _Then_ there is real trouble.)

Oshitari groans and buries his head in his hands. They should really have a how-to manual for this. Or at least a commiseration club, success stories inclusive.

Speaking of success stories, though -

Ootori is beginning to look just the slightest bit unnerved by Oshitari having trapped him into a corner of the clubroom and looking at him in a predatory manner over the rims of his glasses.

No point in beating around the bush, since if he got caught Shishido would be beating him around the head. Oshitari takes the plunge.

"So, Ootori. I have a couple of questions for you." Ootori is nervously fiddling with the chain around his neck, twisting and untwisting, glints of silver threading through his fingers.

"Since I think it was pretty obvious to everyone except Shishido himself that you were - if I might be so blunt - pining for him, when and how exactly did let him know?" Oshitari crosses his arms over his chest and waits for the answer; it will come, because Ootori is hardly capable of saying no, especially to a senpai and even to such a direct and potentially mortifying question as this one.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

"Senpai..." he manages weakly, before Oshitari's mental countdown hits zero and the blush that was originally a mere flake of pink on either cheek at the start of the question has bloomed into a full-fledged crimson flush.

Bingo.

* * *

Oshitari reviews his notes carefully. Apparently the trick to this is to find somewhere nice ("Where both of you will feel comfortable," were Ootori's exact words. He did dispense pretty good advice once his initial prudishness had dissipated); in Shishido and Ootori's case this was... A street tennis court.

_How surprising_.

He supposes that Gakuto would be pretty happy in a gymnasium, but he might die from an aneurysm remembering the disastrously embarrassing ordeal that was his gymnastics module test. Perhaps a dance club, then? Or there might be some truth in that song that boyband-which-Gakuto-learns-dance-moves-off's member - is his name Jin? - sang, the one with the lyric in English that goes _go club get drunk_. Well. He's not sure that's the... desired outcome, so he crosses that off the list, too.

Which leaves a) the planetarium; b) the park, for a (hopefully romantic) picnic; c) the amusement park, because there's a bouncy castle there.

* * *

He's always thought the planetarium would be a good place for a date; stars and the connotations of 'heavenly bodies' and whatnot. Evidently he has reckoned without Gakuto's short attention span.

"Come_on_, Yuushi, there's nothing happening! Why're we lying on these stupid chairs staring up at a stupid dark ceiling with stupid little white lights anyway?" Gakuto's tirade is punctuated with yawns, and his eyes are fluttering shut.

Oshitari's not sure how anyone could _not_ find astrology exciting, but he tries to explain it to Gakuto anyway, the precision of the orbits, the comets trailing light, drawing rainbows of light across the sky, chasing the edges of the galaxy; the dying of the stars, black holes with their endless hunger.

(Sometimes, though, the romantic in him thinks that the black holes could just be lonely, because they are no longer beautiful, no longer stars that people look at and long for, they are the absence of what people yearn for.)

Midway through his explanation about the Little Dipper he looks closely at Gakuto and realises that he is fast asleep. It is one of the few times he has seen Gakuto completely at ease, without the tension in the line of his spine and the nervous energy that ignites at the smallest spark; Gakuto looks extraordinarily small in the dark, huddled on his chair in the dark. Without his usual larger-than-life presence he suddenly looks too delicate, all angles and spindly limbs, palely luminous in the dark, quite possibly as distant and unattainable as the moon.

Oshitari stifles the urge to reach over and smooth away the hair falling (quite beguilingly) over his forehead; Gakuto sighs and turns over, murmuring a little in his sleep - and suddenly flails. His arm is a sudden stripe of warmth across Oshitari's stomach, and Oshitari stills and forgets to breathe for a few long moments.

Eventually he relaxes and leans back in his chair, feels the leather of the seat against the back of his neck, textured and smelling of polish, of age, listens to Gakuto breathing evenly beside him.

With moments like this, it is okay to wait a while more to tell the truth.

* * *

It is time to implement Plan B: a picnic in the park.

Gakuto is bouncing on the balls of his feet and talking about the girl in his class who _refuses to take a bloody hint and sod off because god, there is no way I could ignore the way she shrieks, I swear the note is high enough to smash the chandelier in the Hyotei foyer and every bloody window for ten miles around_; but Oshitari is more interested in the way the breeze is blowing his hair in a berry-hued cloud around his head.

(He makes a note to himself: stop being so obsessed with Gakuto's hair. It's _just hair_. Everyone has hair! Even if people like Atobe have whole epic love affairs with theirs, and Shishido used his as a - rather unseemly - sacrifice to redeem his position on the team, in typical melodramatic fashion and poor taste.)

They walk past a fenced-off field. There are children in it, little boys and girls in their school uniforms; their laughter is high and clear, carried over by the breeze. Oshitari turns to Gakuto but Gakuto is no longer beside him because he has moved to the fence, fingers curling around the wires, over the vines that have carefully twined their way up. He isn't looking at the children: instead his head is tilted upwards, eyes half-shut to avoid staring directly at the sun.

Oshitari looks up and realises that Gakuto is staring at the children's kites, indeterminately dark shapes against a cloudless sky. The look on his face is faintly wistful; Oshitari has never fully understood his obsession with flight.

Gakuto's mobile rings and he jumps and curses, struggling to get it out of his pocket; Oshitari gallantly takes his bag from him, earning himself a look of gratitude.

A flower from the plant on the fence falls to the ground, landing beside Gakuto's foot.

"Yeah?... Oh. Fine, whatever. ... No, I_ don't _want to come home for dinner. What? _No_."

He turns and walks off abruptly, crushing the flower vindictively and kicking at the pebbles on the path along the way. Between them there is an awkward silence, because Oshitari's not always sure what he can say when Gakuto gets like this.

They finally get to the field with the huge tree in the centre of it; Gakuto flops down on the cleanest grass patch he can find with a frustrated _huh_ noise. Oshitari pats the ground before he sits down, neatly and elegantly, cross-legged. When he looks up Gakuto is rolling his eyes.

"You're an anal retentive, Yuushi." They've had this exchange lots of times in different variations, because Oshitari does things like smooth out the creases and dogears in Gakuto's worksheets, straighten his stationery on his desk in their room, sort the clothes in his own cupboard by colour (there is a disproportionate amount of purple, all of which originates either from Atobe as birthday or Christmas gifts or Atobe's colour-themed parties), and arrange the food in the fridge according to its expiry date (earliest on the top shelf, latest on the bottom, chocolate in the little compartment at the top. Gakuto takes a perverse pleasure in undoing all this careful arrangement; the way he sees it, someone's going to do it anyway and that someone might as well be him, since it torments Yuushi so much.

The exchange is also usually a precursor to a fight. Oshitari mentally sighs and braces himself.

Unexpectedly enough Gakuto doesn't start pulling out past examples of his 'ridiculous behaviours' and hurling them at him. Instead he flips over and lies on his stomach, propping his chin up on one hand.

"Do you think I'm weird, Yuushi?"

Oshitari blinks. Gakuto has never asked him a question like this before: it is not in their relationship to ask each other affirming questions because neither has ever lacked attention or recognition.

Before he can answer Gakuto is talking again, about his family and their expectations and how they hate his flashy acrobatics, the colour of his hair and his outrageous self-assurance, how they want him to grow up and dye his hair black again, cut it off so he looks like a boy and not one of those delinquents on the streets, to stop playing tennis and focus on his studies and just _stop being such a deviant_. His parents wanted a quiet, confident, good-looking and intelligent son, a normal boy with normal interests, perhaps sufficiently athletic to win competitions: someone to be a credit to the family.

The unsaid _someone like you_ hangs in the air between them.

Gakuto falls silent and stares moodily up at the leaves above, at the light weakly seeping through the canopy. Between them there is the sound of the leaves rustling against each other, faint whispers of sound.

"Maybe I could give up tennis," he says finally, and Oshitari feels his heart stop for a moment before Gakuto continues. "But that would leave you without a partner, and I'd be a bastard if I did that. Besides, acrobatics by itself is bo-ring."

In the distance the kites are still bobbing, mere specks moving warily around each other. It appears that two of the kites have gotten tangled.

He's never seen Gakuto look this tired, or sound this defeated before; the degree of vulnerability is frightening, because it means Gakuto is offering him trust that he's not sure he has the right to have.

Oshitari hesitates for a moment, then proffers his shoulder. With anyone else it would be an incredibly odd gesture, but it feels alright with Gakuto, who leans his head against Oshitari's shoulder and loses some of the bitterness from the line of his mouth.

They stay like that for a while, and when Gakuto looks at him and a corner of his mouth crooks upwards in an attempt at his usual smile Oshitari realises that there are some things that one doesn't need to confess, after all.

* * *

The kites stay aloft until sunset; they watch them sink slowly with the sun and then Oshitari walks Gakuto home, Gakuto's fingers curled tightly around Oshitari's wrist. 


End file.
